Strike Fighters: Project 1 Updated Preview
We take another look at this flight sim from the developers of European Air War and Longbow II.
If you hadn't heard of Strike Fighters: Project 1 before, you probably did in conjunction with its disastrous premature release through Wal-Mart, where Strategy First shipped a press preview alpha version for retail and ended up with a bunch of recalled games when it became clear to buyers how far from completion the game really was. That leaves us in the odd position of previewing a game that some people may already have played and that even has had a "patch" applied. Nevertheless, the build we got was much more recent than the one released through Wal-Mart, and it looks like the game is actually shaping up to be a pretty good flight sim. This is hardly surprising, since the lead programmer and designer for the game, Tsuyoshi Kawahito (Third Wire founder), was also the lead designer on European Air War, which is still the standard for European theater WWII flight sims. For his own company's debut game, Kawahito chose the underappreciated 1960s as the setting, when jets were no longer new but air combat was still evolving very rapidly. You won't see a lot of radar-guided missile duels from beyond visual range, simply because the technology wasn't that advanced at that time. It's an interesting period in aviation history, and Third Wire has captured it well so far.
Strike Fighters: Project 1 is a classic "survey sim," with multiple flyable aircraft, and its emphasis is on providing a range of flying experiences rather than trying to model a single plane exhaustively. The game has four flyable aircraft types with several variants: the F-4 Phantom II (plus the B, C, D, and E models), the A-4 Skyhawk (plus the B, C, and E models), the F-104G Starfighter, and the F-100D Super Sabre. These were chosen for several reasons, including the fact that they were all US-built aircraft that were widely exported and thus make sense in the context of a fictional campaign where the opposing forces consist of Soviet-built weaponry. Third Wire also wanted to include multirole aircraft that would complement each other and allow for the illustration of advances in combat aircraft over the period of the 1960s. The various models of Phantom II, for example, do this quite nicely. On the opposing sided, you'll fly against the usual suspects from the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau, with the MiG-17, -19, and -21 all represented, along with the Su-7 Fitter and various larger aircraft. Friendly nonflyable aircraft include the B-57 Canberra, the C-130 Hercules, and the O-1 Bird Dog spotter plane.
The aircraft choices may disappoint those hoping for a straight-on Vietnam sim, but the game's planned expandability should allow both the company and modders to produce additional aircraft to flesh out the game universe. There is certainly no shortage of candidates for additional aircraft for modelers to choose from.
Considering the computing power available to today's flight sim enthusiasts, there really isn't any excuse not to have a good-looking sim, and Third Wire does a nice job with the graphics in several areas, most notably the aircraft models and skins, which are just beautiful. The terrain looks fine from up high, which is where you'll be seeing it from most of the time. Also outstanding are the 3D cockpits, with clear instrumentation and a very realistic look to them. The game ran fairly well on a low-end machine, albeit with medium graphics settings, while on our high-end Pentium 4 with all the settings maxed, it looked great and was extremely smooth.
Strike Fighters: Project 1 Quick Links
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- GameSpot Score6.6fair
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| Amazon.com | $19.99 | SHOP › |
Content you might like…
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E3 2002Strike Fighters: Project 1 Movie 1
See some footage of Strike Fighters in this clip.
- May 22, 2002
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- Strategy First
- Third Wire
- Jet Sim
- Release: Oct 27, 2002
- ESRB: Teen
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